07 March 2012

Man shot by rescuers responding to Life Alert

Somehow the uncle, Kenneth Chamberlain Sr., a
former Marine who had heart problems and wheezed if he walked more than
40 feet, triggered his Life Alert
pendant. The Life Alert operator came on the loudspeaker in his
one-bedroom apartment, asking: “Mr. Chamberlain, are you O.K.?” All of
this is recorded.

Mr. Chamberlain didn’t respond. So the operator signaled for an
ambulance. Police patrol cars fell in behind — standard operating
procedure in towns across America. Except an hour later, even as Mr.
Chamberlain insisted he was in good health, the police had snapped the
locks on the apartment door.

They fired electric charges from Tasers, and beanbags from shotguns.
Then they said they saw Mr. Chamberlain grab a knife, and an officer
fired his handgun.

The rest of the story is at the link. There certainly are extenuating circumstances, some of which are delineated in the article. Please defer on any comments about 'bringing a knife to a gunfight,' which we'll return to in a later post.

11 comments:

Many home's main entrances are adjacent to the kitchen. How convenient for law enforcement...Has me rethinking our Henkel set right there on the counter. "he made a move for the knife so we shot him. You have to believe us because he isn't going to testify and look, he has a knife in his hand".I never thought that "more cameras" was an answer but how else will some truth be known?

inb4 FORMER Marine. Not that I give a toss myself, but wait for the knuckle draggers that ordinarily have a difficult time parsing the English language insist on this one meaningless pedantic correction; and you will have to offer them an apology and promise never to make the 'mistake' again.

Thanks for the heads-up, JK. I hadn't even considered that "ex-marine" could be insulting, but I can see the sentiment. I've changed the post title to "man", since his former military service is not directly relevant to the story.

In one of the Punisher movies the hero is down for the count with a knife in his hand. The villain approaches with a gun exclaiming something along the lines of only an idiot brings a knife to a gun fight. This particular knife, though, is spring-loaded. The blade ends up in the villains throat.

This is only tangentially related, but if one wants some piece of mind without (a) paying Life Alert's extortionate monthly fee and (b) involving the medical/law enforcement system unnecessarily there are other alternatives.

A number of products exist which are essentially reverse answering machines linked to a panic button on a pendant. They can be programmed to play a prerecorded call for help to an extensive list of predetermined phone numbers (usually of friends and family). They will sequentially call them all in a round-robin fashion until help arrives.

"Tai-wiki-widbee" is an eclectic mix of trivialities, ephemera, curiosities, and exotica with a smattering of current events, social commentary, science, history, English language and literature, videos, and humor. We try to be the cyberequivalent of a Victorian cabinet of curiosities.

The 2008 Weblog Awards

Category: Best New Blog

Translate

Search TYWKIWDBI

About Me

I'm using an old photo of my grandfather as an avatar; he would have been amused.
Readers - especially old friends, classmates, students, former colleagues, and long-lost relatives - are welcome to email me via retag4726 (at) mypacks.net